


The Wait & The Weight

by michaud



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michaud/pseuds/michaud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Opie’s mind is swirling between past and present, between the recent burden of Jax’s weight, and half a lifetime ago, to the first time he’d carried Jax like a babe in arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wait & The Weight

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from two songs of the same respective names by Laura Stevenson & The Cans, from their album "Sit Resist". There are references snuck in here to Jawbreaker, Astronautalis, and David Foster Wallace. This was written a year ago for a friend when she was sick. 
> 
> Please let me know if I need to warn for anything else, or if there are errors I missed.

The first thing Opie notices is how light Jax feels in his arms. Jax isn’t a big guy, but he hasn’t been scrawny since, well–since the last time Opie carried him.  
  
Opie deposits his best friend, fully clothed and blacked-out drunk, in the shower and turns the cold water on full-blast. In the thirty seconds it takes Jax to wake up, spluttering and shivering from the chill, Opie forgets to breathe. This has been the longest year of Opie’s life. Losing Donna, dealing with the kids, his mother, Piney, Gemma, Tara, Clay and all his violent, crazy shit, and—  
  
And Jax. Jax has not been himself for a while now. He’s not just skinnier, he’s less solid. Opie first attributed it to having a kid, he means, lord knows Abel’s not made Jax’s life any easier. Not that Ope begrudges the kid anything at all, he loves him like one of his own. But Abel was born with holes in him that Opie secretly thinks never healed, just transferred over to Jax. Jax was always the stable one in their relationship, or at least as stable as a biker brat ever could be, and Opie was the one with the alcoholic father, the mother who abandoned him when he left her, the oversensitive streak and the penchant for burning things. Jax was smaller than Opie, but he was always this comforting, solid presence Opie could wrap around himself when things started to feel cold and heavy.  
  
Only now Abel’s gone, stolen by the fucking Irishman, and Jax is drinking himself into stupors because being awake is so much worse than the hangover to come. And damn if Opie doesn’t know what that feels like, but Donna’s been gone for a while now and the pain is starting to subside a little. Or, no. Not subside, that’s the wrong word. But it’s like dragging a ball and chain around: you drag it long enough, you get strong enough to take it, until it dulls from an all-encompassing drain to a permanent ache in the corners.  
  
Jax is shaking under the cold spray, and for a moment Opie thinks he’s crying. But then he remembers, no. This is Jax. And for all SAMCRO can be incongruously emotional, Jax prefers to purge that from himself when he’s smoking on the roof of the clubhouse or rocking Abel to sleep. When he thinks he’s alone and out of sight.  
  
Opie thinks, staring at Jax’s trembling form, this is only the second most heartbreaking thing he’s witnessed today. Because even this, watching his friend spiral down towards the drain, unable to stop it, is only half as awful as the scream Jax had let loose on the pier. Standing out by the water, the entire club, and realizing that Abel was gone, having to watch as Jax had the earth pulled out from under him.  
  
It takes a long time for Jax to come to semi-coherence, and when he does, he’s still drunk, he’s still so small and broken-looking that Opie is loathe to leave him alone.  
  
Opie’s mind is swirling between past and present, between the recent press of Jax’s weight in his arms and half a lifetime ago, to the first time he’d carried Jax like a babe in arms.  
  
\--  
  
Jax and he were sixteen the night Jax climbed up the drainpipe to drag Opie out of bed. He looked rattled, hunched on the roof when Opie went to open the window, but Opie just said, “What the fuck, Jax, I was asleep.”  
  
Jax said, “Liar,” which was true. “You want to do something?”  
  
Opie was about to bitch Jax out about bugging him at all hours, but something in the set of Jax’s shoulders stopped him. And honestly, Jax was the relatively stable one and if he was showing up in the middle of the night looking like a kicked dog, Opie wasn’t going to argue with him. “Sure.”  
  
Jax attempted a grin and pulled a pint of whiskey from his pocket, waggled it at Opie. “I brought this but I’m thinking we might need to make another booze run. There’s that new 24-hour place, the Korean one? They ain’t seen you yet, you could probably pull it off with just the beard and no ID.”  
  
Opie nodded and hunted around for a shirt, an implausible feat considering that it had been laundry day for nearly two weeks. He found a pair of pants, gave up on the shirt and pulled a sweatshirt over his bare torso while Jax paced behind him.  
  
“Would you quit that? You’re making me twitch,” Opie said.  
  
“Sorry.” Jax sat down on Opie’s bed but kept jiggling his leg.  
  
Opie shoved his feet into work boots. “You OK, brother?”  
  
Jax just looked at him, eyes clear and shocking blue in the hesitation before he said. “Yeah. I’m fine.”  
  
  
They left by the front door, clomping past Piney out cold on the couch, still done-for from his liquid lunch. Some days were worse than others with Piney. This whole month had been bad days, leaving Opie stuck with the bills, the groceries, and the laundry. Hence, laundry day for two weeks, and Opie was starting to smell.  
  
They crunched down the gravel road, forgoing vehicular transportation for the quieter, more contemplative two-mile walk to the new liquor store. Jax wasn’t known as much of a talker, but when he was with Opie, the two of them never shut up, talking about bikes, the club, girls (or more lately, girl: Jax and Tara were on-again, with the full forces of Jax’s formidable personality and Tara’s equally formidable wrath to propel them). Tonight, though, Jax was near silent as they walked and took turns swigging from Jax’s bottle.  
  
Opie, no great conversationalist under the best of circumstances, just walked beside Jax, scuffing his boots slightly on the pavement, wondering what was wrong.  
  
  
They had finished Jax’s whiskey by the time they got to the liquor store. Jax handed Opie some cash for the rot-gut that was all they could afford and waited outside smoking while Opie defrauded some cashiers.  
  
They walked another half-mile or so to the overpass that Jax refused to stop calling “The Bridge” and sat on the sidewalk with their feet hanging out over the highway below. Jax closed his eyes and said, as a whole passel of trucks passed beneath them flanked by the Mayan MC, “This is what it sounds like to step into traffic.”  
  
Jax had always had a dramatic streak, you had to if you were Gemma’s kid, but Opie didn’t know what to do with this new side of Jax.  
  
They kept kissing the bottle.  
  
  
  
Sunlight broke over the horizon as they stumbled home, dangerously drunk. Jax normally just drank to get buzzed, but tonight, he drank like he was trying to flush something out, and Opie kept up. They walked close, shoulders bumping, and Opie had to concentrate hard to not trip on Jax’s feet. They didn’t speak until they were within sight of Opie’s porch, when Jax said, “My mom hates my dad.”  
  
He didn’t look up, murmured the words staring down at his boots, and Opie was thrown. “No, she doesn’t,” he said, “your parents are the only ones left still together.”  
  
Jax shook his head and his jaw tensed. He inhaled sharply. “Heard them fighting tonight. They didn’t even try to keep it down. She kept yelling about his rotten Irish coward’s blood.” Jax spoke slowly, making the effort to pronounce each word quietly and clearly. His shoulder bumped with Ope’s as they walked up the porch steps, sitting a little closer than normal on the top one. Opie leaned against the banister and closed his eyes as Jax talked, the low hum of his voice breaking through the alcoholic haze sharp as any hair of the dog.  
  
“And my old man,” Jax said, “JT just took it. Just stood there and let her call him those things. He didn’t say one thing until after she was done with him, and then he just said, ‘This isn’t working’ and he left. Didn’t slam the door. Just left quietly, got on his bike and rode away.”  
  
Jax was hunched over, head in his hands, speaking so softly Opie could barely hear him.  
  
“He wasn’t back when I left. And Gemma, she didn’t even care. She was just watching TV, doing the crossword like usual. Went to bed without him.”  
  
Opie threw an arm around Jax’s still-slim shoulders and gently squeezed his arm. “It’ll pass,” he said. “Your parents have been together a long time, they’re not going anywhere.”  
  
“I have never heard more hate in someone’s voice than I heard from Gemma tonight. Do you know,” Jax said, and here his voice broke and he finally met Opie’s eyes. “I mean, fuck, do you know what it feels like to know you’re the product of a rotten marriage? Like you’re created from hatred?”  
  
Opie removed his arm from Jax’s shoulders and ran the hand through his hair. He half-glared at him and said, “Yeah, Jax. I know what that’s like.”  
  
Jax’s face crumpled. “Shit, Opie. God, I’m so sorr—you know I didn’t mean it that way, I didn’t mean to—”  
  
Opie said, “I know, brother,” but Jax was already taking a gulp from the bottle, coughing a little as it went down. Opie reached, and Jax handed it to him, swaying a little.  
  
“Opie,” he said, “Why didn’t you tell me it felt like this? Why didn’t you say anything?” He rested his forehead against Opie’s shoulder, over-long hair falling into his face.  
  
“You fucking sap,” Opie said, but Jax was breathing deeply, asleep on his arm.  
  
Opie would have normally just left him on the porch and gone to bed, but for whatever reason, he capped and pocketed the bottle, carefully lifted Jax’s head and stood, scooping Jax’s thin frame into his arms and staggering a little as he entered the house. He made it up the stairs, no mean feat considering the colossal amount of booze he’d ingested, and into his bedroom where he laid Jax carefully on his bed. Jax looked, for the first time in a long while, peaceful lying there. Neither manic, whipped into a frenzy over Tara, nor angry, nor exhausted. Opie leaned over his sleeping figure and pressed a dry kiss to Jax’s temple, unsure what he was doing.  
  
Opie pulled away and started toeing off his boots when Jax reached out and took his arm, pulling him back. Jax rolled over and said, voice hoarse from sleep and whiskey, “Stay.”  
  
Opie crawled into the bed beside Jax, their arms and legs pressing together warmly in the twin bed. Opie’s feet hung off the end. He rolled onto his side and curled in on himself, facing Jax. Jax turned at the same time and slung one arm over Opie’s waist, snuggling closer.  
  
He couldn’t tell whether Jax was still awake, his eyes were closed, but he muttered, “You’re a handsy fucking drunk, you know that?”  
  
“Shut up,” Jax said, and there, _there_ , his eyes were open now, as blue and clear and shockingly sober as when he’d first crawled in the window, and that was what Opie noticed first as Jax kissed him carefully on the mouth.  
  
It was chaste and warm, close-lipped, and they watched each other’s eyes for a sign. Opie blinked, slow and heavy, and Jax kissed him again, a little hungrier this time. His lips were not pressed so firmly together, and a little of his breath rolled over Opie’s tongue, nearly indistinguishable from his own.  
  
Only then did it occur to Opie that he ought to respond. In his current state, he wasn’t quite sure what was happening, and equally unsure as to why he didn’t object to being kissed by another boy.  
  
(Some cruel, confusing part of his brain at this point decided to point out that Jax was almost disgustingly pretty, in addition to being his oldest, closest friend and practical brother.)  
  
Which, well, Opie shoved that thought down pretty quickly, enjoying despite himself the way Jax was biting down slightly on his lower lip. He would _not_ think of Jax as his brother, he would just—  
  
Kiss him?  
  
He shoved that thought down, too. He ran his tongue along Jax’s teeth, tracing up the jagged edges of his canine, then licking further into his mouth. Jax hummed a little, his fingers threading through Opie’s hair, twisting and tugging just slightly as he pulled himself in closer. His eyes were closed now, his mouth a little swollen under Opie’s. Opie pulled away from Jax’s mouth and kissed down his chin, along his jawline, sucking slightly on the tender skin between his jaw and ear. The humming sound turned to a slight whine as Jax said, “Oh, god, Ope,” and held on tighter to his hair.  
  
Opie’s hands wandered lower, slipping under Jax’s jacket and shirt. He tried in vain to get both off until Jax took pity and shrugged himself out of the jacket, then deftly pulled the thin shirt over his head. Opie ran his calloused fingers along Jax’s pale ribs, eliciting a shiver from Jax, who pulled Opie back up to his mouth. Opie could feel Jax’s fingers loosen their grip on his hair, could feel Jax’s hands skating down his torso, under his sweatshirt to bare skin beneath, and he tried not to make a thoroughly unmanly sound as Jax let his cold hands wander higher on Opie’s chest. _Definitely a handsy drunk._  
  
And then there were cold fingers creeping underneath the waist of his jeans, and Opie gave up on manliness and may have moaned a little. Jax’s other hand was still wandering around under Opie’s sweatshirt, slower now. Jax slipped down from Opie’s mouth to softly kiss the divot in his clavicle, just visible over his collar, and then bite down hard on the bones themselves. Opie's dick made a valiant effort at that, and he gasped a little.  
  
For a moment, all motion ceased as Jax nuzzled close and warm into Opie’s neck, soothing over the bite marks with closed lips, making that humming sound again. Opie felt it vibrating through the column of his throat and resisted the urge to giggle. “Jesus, Jax,” he said, gently pulling him up by the back of his neck and sealing their mouths together again. Jax’s hand slipped out from his waistband and found Opie’s, twining their fingers, hands crushed between them.  
  
Jax kissed him slowly, sleepily now, and Opie could feel the small smile against his lips as he rubbed lazy circles on Jax’s back and shoulder blades. They were pressed so close now, Jax’s naked torso snug within the confines of Opie’s arms. They were both drowsing, Opie could feel himself drifting off, and Jax’s mouth was pressed against his in the remnants of a kiss. Jax kicked off his own boots and socks. They fell softly to the carpet below, next to Opie’s. Opie reached below and pulled the covers sloppily over their bodies as Jax rolled half-way on top of him.  
  
Jax’s weight was a pleasant constriction, warm and none too heavy, and Opie’s last thought as he drifted to sleep was that it was a damn shame, whiskey dick having got the better of them.  
  
  
  
He woke around noon, sun streaming in from the window at the head of his bed, to Jax’s sleepy-eyed face pressed against his arm, gazing up at him from under his eyelashes. Their feet were tangled at the bottom of the bed, and Opie was still wrapped around Jax like he was something to lose.  
  
Jax wriggled up so close their lips brushed, right in Opie’s face, eyes questioning, when his phone rang. The loud, awful sound broke the moment, and both Jax and Opie winced visibly as it punctured their throbbing heads. Opie clapped his hands over his ears, groaning, while Jax fumbled for the phone. He opened it, pulled up the antenna and whispered hoarsely, “Hello?”  
  
Opie could hear Tara’s voice through the phone, asking “ _Hey, where are you? We were going to research colleges today at lunch but I haven’t seen you._ ” Her voice was too loud, blaring like a siren through Opie’s head, _warning, warning._ He rolled over and sat up, scrubbing his hands over his face and blinking a couple of times until his floor stopped looking so furry.  
  
Jax was speaking quietly into the phone, reassuring Tara that he’d be there soon, he’d just been running an errand for Gemma, and Opie wondered what it meant that as much as he loved her, Jax still didn’t trust Tara with his less stable moments.  
  
He shoved that thought down with a couple of others into a place he was beginning to think of as his Thought Closet, for all things Gay and Skeletal. He was going to find a way to get rid of the Closet and the Thoughts alike, but like, after some fucking coffee and bread or something. Maybe a Bloody Mary, on the off-chance that there was any tomato juice in the house. Knowing Piney, that might be the only thing in the house that remotely resembled a vegetable.

  
Opie pulled his boots on and slipped out of the room while Jax was still on the phone, down to the kitchen so that when Jax finally came downstairs, there were coffee and bilious hangover-maybe-cures waiting. Opie wordlessly shoved one of each into Jax’s hands and tried to ignore the look of abject gratitude that Jax gave him in return.  
  
  
  
On any other day, Jax would have rode bitch on Opie’s bike back home, but the Thought Closet was feeling a little bloated already, so they walked.  
  
Tara didn’t say a word about their slept-in clothes, tangled hair, bruised necks, or the smells of coffee and booze that hung around all day.  
  
\--  
  
Jax is dressed in dry clothes and semi-sober now, less needful of Opie-as-crutch. The whole club is staring at them as they emerge from the bathroom, their eyes filled with a mixture of pity, fear, and anger, and Opie thinks it’s a good thing Jax won’t look up from his shoes because there’s no security in those gazes, only ammunition, and Jax has plenty of that.  
  
The Irish have his son, after all, and they’re going to get him back. In that moment, Opie swears an oath to himself on everything he and Jax have shared, then tamps it down around all the other things he can’t yet face.


End file.
